Marketing

How to view pricing, cross-selling, and customer loyalty during difficult economic times.  (Reprinted from "Marketing in Difficult Times," Effective Executive, July, 2009, pp. 11-18.)

In the customer expectations arena, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact on expectations of variation in cultural variables unique to a country. Here the authors focus on one country, India, and a major cultural influence there — the extent of belief in karma. Prior research in the United States suggests that disconfirmation sensitivity lowers expectations. Here the authors examine whether belief in karma and, consequently, having a long-term orientation, counteracts the tendency to lower expectations in two studies that measure and prime respondents' belief in karma.

On a visit to any major U.S. department store, consumers can observe vendor shops (typically for cosmetics, apparel, apparel accessories, electronics, and toys), each selling a particular brand exclusively and designed to reflect the image of that brand. For these vendor shops, also called boutiques or "stores within a store," retailers rent out retail space to the respective manufacturers and give them complete autonomy over retail-level decisions, such as pricing and in-store service.

We present a broad-based, consumer-centric view of innovation — referred to as "perceived firm innovativeness" (PFI). PFI is conceptualized as the consumer's perception of an enduring firm capability that results in novel, creative, and impactful ideas and solutions. We develop and validate a PFI scale and show that PFI impacts consumer loyalty via two processing routes: a functional-cognitive route and an affective-experiential route.

We develop a methodology for the measurement of the parameters of cumulative prospect theory and time discounting models based on tools from the preference measurement literature. These parameters are typically elicited by presenting decision makers with a series of choices between hypothetical alternatives, gambles or delayed payments. We present a method for adaptively designing the sets of hypothetical choices presented to decision makers, and a method for estimating the preference function parameters which capture interdependence across decision makers as well as response error.

Discussion of different marketing strategies to employ during difficult times.  (Reprinted from "Marketing in Difficult Times," Effective Executive, July, 2009, pp. 11-18.)